The Mystery of the Missing Moss

This is a tale of a small group of mosses in the genus Sorapilla. Over the past 150 years they were located by scientists only a handful of times in the wild. That is until recently. A undergraduate student found a population of Sorapilla papuana in Queensland, Australia. 

The real mystery about these mosses is determining its closest relatives. It has a very unique morphology = (exterior size and shape), which has helped researchers come up with hypotheses about its relatives. This new discovery of live mosses means that DNA can be extracted from the plants and used to test these ideas, potentially resolving the conundrum of Sorapilla's relatives.

Honestly I had never known about this genus before hearing about it's recent re-discovery. The article (linked to above) alludes to its unique morphology and I was interested to learn more about it. These mosses grow in tropical regions, so off I went to my Guide to the Bryophytes of Tropical America. To my surprise and delight I discovered that Sorapilla mimics some of my favorite mosses, the Fissidentaceae. 

Both Sorapilla and the Fissidentaceae have leaves in two-ranks, meaning they have a row that runs along the right side of the stem opposite a row that runs down the left side. Most mosses have leaves that spiral around the stem, sticking off in all possible directions. The other cool feature about the leaves is that they are divided into two regions a single layered lamina at the top and a region below where the leaf forks, creating a pocket that clasps the leaf above it. Based on my reading, these are the only two groups of mosses with this type of leaf. Despite these similarities, other features of the sporophyte indicate that Sorapilla and the Fissidentaceae are not closely related. I am really excited to hear what the findings are from the DNA data and which mosses are the closest relatives of Sorapilla. If in the end it is not a close relative of the Fissidentaceae, then it will be another cool example of convergent evolution. Two distantly related species evolving similar morphologies.  

Click here for a link to an image of Sorapilla papuana. 
Not to be confused with sopapillas, the tasty fried pastry.

For comparison, this is a photo of Fissidens that
I took while hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

I find it a funny irony that the closest town to the population of the rediscovered moss is called Mossman. It sounds like a town full or moss super heros. MossMan! However, the town name was originally Mosman, so it probably wasn't named for moss plants.  

Hat tip to Dr. Tobias Landberg for sending me the article about this discovery. 

June 2013 Desktop Calendar

I spent the past week visiting my family in Cincinnati, Ohio. We went for a ride on an old railroad bed that was converted into a bike path. This Fissidens was growing on a muddy bank at the edge of the woods. It was a nice day for a ride a little muggy, but pleasant with the bike-generated breeze. Now back to the dry heat of central California and my mosses in the laboratory.

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will lose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver - Desktop; Windows: Control Panel - Display - Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

April 2013 Desktop Calendar

I went for a hike this weekend at the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve. It was a really great hike up into the Coast Range with some great views of the mountains and beyond! We saw some nice mosses like this small Fissidens and the spring wildflowers were in bloom.

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will lose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver - Desktop; Windows: Control Panel - Display - Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.

This is the view back into the mountains.

And this is looking over the ridge out into the central valley. We could see the towns of Winters and Davis, and then way off in the distance is the skyline of Sacramento. 

I would definitely recommend this hike to anyone in the area. Great views from ~1500 feet up and a lot of great plants to check out!

Some More Mosses from Japan

While in Japan I traveled to the small town of Nozawa Onsen. It is about an hour north of Nagano, via train and then bus. Nozawa is nestled in the mountains and is famous for the many onsen (hot springs) that dot the village. I hear that it is also a great place to ski and we saw many ski lifts heading up into the surrounding mountains. While walking around town we visited a shrine that was surrounded by moss.

However, I did not collect any mosses. I am not sure what the karma impact might be from collecting moss from the grounds of a shrine. So I just took some pictures instead.

The photo to the right is a member of the Orthotricaceae. All of the little tan/brown structures are the sporophytes. The Orthotricaceae are recognized by their short sporophytes with upright capsules. Typically they grow on tree bark or rocks and have dark green gametophytes that can sometimes appear black when dry.

Sculptures on the grounds of the shrine were covered in mosses!

These a a couple of shots of some Fissidens sp. Members of this genus have a really gorgeous morphology! The leaves do not spiral around the stem as in most mosses. In Fissidens they have a distichous leaf arrangement, meaning that they are positioned 180 degrees opposite each other on the stem. It is the same leaf arrangement that you see in Iris plants. This distintictive pattern of leaves makes mosses in the genus Fissidens stand out from other species in the field.